Hello Readers!

We hope that you are managing to tread your way through the new normal and find comfort, joy, and safety in whichever part of the world you are currently located.

As the team at India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) navigate work from home and a staggered return to office from June 01, 2020, we bring to you our latest newsletter in a fresh format to keep you up-to-date on what the IFA and the arts community has been doing under these challenging circumstances.

In this newsletter, we share special messages from Rathi Vinay Jha, the Chairperson of our Board of Trustees and Arundhati Ghosh, our Executive Director. You will also find updates on our programmes, various virtual events we organised, and the work of our grantees and staff during the lockdown period.

MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIRPERSON, BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Dear Readers,

We are passing through an adversity that many of us have not experienced in our lifetime. It is in such times, when human ingenuity, creativity, and endeavour are challenged, that we surprise ourselves by reaching into our minds, to depths, we did not know existed. We look around us to see efforts we did not imagine possible earlier. Universal access to virtual performances of operas, musicals, and theatre that were recorded history have now surfaced online with the promise of unending hours of pleasure.

Human creativity and mediums of expression have always delighted us. Now technology has added another dimension to make it possible for us to respond to challenges that we will face for some time.

In the unanticipated times we live today, IFA hopes to open our doors to technology and present the work of our grantees to worlds that IFA has not known, and those that do not know IFA.

Wishing you all the best and stay connected!

Rathi Vinay Jha

MESSAGE FROM OUR EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Dear Readers,

One wonders how to begin to write a message such as this, at a time when the world as we knew it has turned on its head. We have no clue how long COVID-19 will continue to disrupt our lives. Like Alice, of Alice in Wonderland, I feel like asking, “How long is forever?” And I hear White Rabbit saying, “Sometimes, just one second”.

We see the plight of the world around us, especially those of the communities less privileged than us like migrant labourers, daily wage earners, sex workers and others with no safety nets. It is making us realise how broken our social systems already were. While some of us are trying our best to help, we understand it will be a herculean task to reach everyone in need.

Amidst all of this, at IFA, we are very concerned about the community of artists and scholars who we have committed to serve. The fragile economies that barely held them together earlier are breaking down. There are no audiences, no paid work, and no sense of when life will get back to ‘normal’, or whether it ever will. The changes in this world are rapidly affecting our realities of making and experiencing art. The worry of not just financial sustenance, but also of creative and artistic continuity and the ability to adapt to the transforming world, is making everyone anxious. There is an overall sense of despair.

But artists heal broken worlds. They are hope makers of time. And during this time of crisis, it is IFA who needs to be their ‘hope’, and stand by the community. As facilitators we need to support the continuation of cultural work; as catalysts, we need to figure ways of adapting to the new realities in the sector, and as provocateurs, we have to push artists to think beyond just ‘going digital’ which everyone seems to be stuck with at the moment.

And we hope as supporters, partners, donors, influencers and artists yourselves – you will be with us.

Warm regards,
Arundhati Ghosh

We turn to the arts when we are joyful; we turn to the arts when we grieve. And in times of uncertainty and despair, we turn to arts again for sustaining our hopes. The arts enable us to forge solidarities, make sense of the present, and come together to imagine collective futures. This is especially true of now when the Coronavirus pandemic continues to disrupt and alter our lives. More here, than ever anywhere else, the arts must remind us of the human capacity to endure, re-imagine, and create.

We at IFA thus continue to support projects across our programmes. Some of our programmes are open for submissions of proposals. We realise that during these times, projects will need fresh modes of thinking, creating, and presenting the arts, as well as new imaginations of engagement with audiences and communities. We encourage and welcome such enquiries and explorations, within the mandate of our programmes. We hope that we will emerge more resilient and compassionate from this global crisis.

(Across all our programmes, we have been in touch with our current grantees and are supporting them in every way possible.)

The Project 560 programme at IFA is committed to a long-term, continuous engagement with the city. Grants under Project 560 are made available in the following categories:

Grants for Neighbourhood Engagements: For those interested in engaging with the spaces, stories, and people of their neighbourhood in Bangalore.

Grants for Curated Artistic Engagements: For non-profit organisations or individuals on behalf of a registered non-profit organisation for the period of a year, to curate a year-long series of artistic and cultural engagements that reflects upon, asks questions of, and/or offers multiple imaginations of the city.

Grants for Arts Projects (Research/Practice): For practitioners and researchers/scholars to creatively engage with the city's pasts, presents or futures through critical inquiry.

The Call for Proposals is now Open under Neighbourhood Engagements.

Call for Neighbourhood Engagements
Deadline: July 10, 2020

The Arts Research programme supports scholars, researchers, and practitioners to undertake research into the various histories and expressions of artistic practices in India. It seeks to foster wider perspectives, understandings, interpretations, and engagements in the arts.

The Request for Proposals under this programme is now Open.
Deadline: July 20, 2020

Senior Programme Officer Tanveer Ajsi talks about the Arts Research programme
and how you can apply in the video below:

The Arts Research programme for the year 2020-2021 is part-supported by Titan Company Limited.

The Arts Practice programme supports critical practice in the arts and accepts proposals all year round. It encourages practitioners working across artistic disciplines to question existing notions through their practice.

The Request for Proposals under this programme is open through the year.

The Arts Education programme titled Kali Kalisu, (‘Learn and Teach’ in Kannada), focusses on integrating arts with the curriculum in government schools in Karnataka. It attempts to achieve this objective through grants made to artists and teachers; and facilitating training workshops for teachers and administrators.

Watch out for Call for Proposals from teachers, artists and schools that will open later in the year.

Listening to our Grantees

The team organised two online meetings with grantees under this programme on April 30, 2020, and May 07, 2020. 60 teachers and artists across Karnataka joined these sessions amidst this background to share their concerns, pressures, and roadblocks they are facing; alternatives to ensure the continuation of their projects; and suggestions for IFA.

The objective of the Archives and Museums programme, launched in September 2019 for a period of three years, is to continue to energise museums and archives as platforms for dialogue and discourse. Instead of fellowships, the programme will offer grants.

A panel of four experts—Joyoti Roy, Surajit Sarkar, Tapati Guha-Thakurta and Sundar Ganesan—were invited to be advisors for this programme. Based on our research and the responses to the questionnaire about needs that was circulated to shortlisted institutions, at an online meeting held on March 23, 2020, IFA together with the expert panel selected four institutions to collaborate with for the coming year: the archives at the National Rail Museum, Delhi; the People’s Archive of Rural India (online); the Gurusaday Museum, Kolkata; and the Museum of Christian Art, Goa.

The programme will offer scholarly, creative and technical grants through open calls in association with these chosen institutions in the following months.

Write to Suman Gopinath at suman@indiaifa.org for more details.

The Archives and Museums programme is part-supported by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi.

The IFA Archive is now online with a wide range of material from about 304 grants made between 2005 - 2015! Visit for a greater access to and understanding of the work of multiple voices – marginal, mainstream, silent, loud, hushed – from the larger linguistic, geographical, social, cultural and demographical contexts of India.

Explore a grant from the Archive with us!

Discover an Archival and Museum Fellowship made to artist/filmmaker Kush Badhwar in 2014 - 2015 for research, collation, and documentation of materials from archives related to the practice of the revolutionary poet, Gaddar, who has been an active advocate for a separate state of Telangana. This artistic engagement was documented through photographs, text, video, and recorded audios of political discourse, conversations, and interviews.

The physical IFA Archive in Bangalore remains closed to visitors due to the COVID-19 crisis.

A visitor engaging with material at the archives related to the practice of Gaddar, a revolutionary poet who has been an active advocate for a separate state of Telangana

The IFA Archive is built with support from the Lohia Foundation.

back to top

In the absence of our usual live grant showcases in the form of presentations, performances, panel discussions, film screenings which allowed for interactions with multiple audiences across the country, the team at IFA discussed internally and decided to go digital, create exciting spaces of discovery and discussion online. Below is an account of these activities over the last few months:

Staying Connected Series

With the hope to stay connected with the larger IFA community over email and social media platforms, we have been sharing the work of our grantees and other resources from the world of arts and culture. Browse through the series to find material that we hope you will like engaging with - Of Old Songs, Imagined Homelands and Men of Pukar, A Mythical City and Sultana's Reality, Listen to musicians of the Agra Gharana and Journey through the folk music of Bengal, Light Doesn’t Have Arms To Carry Us | Across, Not Over and many more.

Read Witness art through an archive, an article about the Staying Connected series published in Midday.

A still from Somewhere, a text-driven, first-person exploration game

Listening Posts

The people of the arts and culture world, who we aim to serve, are finding themselves in vulnerable positions both socially and economically during this time of crisis. To listen to their thoughts and concerns on how the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown has affected their lives, IFA created two Listening Posts on April 13, 2020 and April 23, 2020 online in which 53 artists joined us. They also suggested steps IFA could take to support the field.

Their concerns included the loss of income and employment for artists working in the traditional and contemporary forms in both rural and urban areas, which may result in reduced negotiating power in the long run; the limited accessibility of the digital platforms to creating and showcasing their work which will lead to further alienation and exclusion of artists in the margins; not being able to work on collaborative projects; and the new challenges in fundraising for the arts and culture sector from both corporate and individual donors due to their changed priorities and financial situations.

They proposed that IFA continue to share the work of our grantees online, organise capacity building workshops across various skills and expertise, including workshops for young arts managers and various ways to use and monetise the arts through digital technology; extend support to more artists to continue their work by making smaller grants, and encourage work that takes into account questions of sustenance and survival within the ecology. For the team at IFA, it was an experience of deep connection and learning in our isolated times.

IFA’s Collaboration with UNESCO, Marg, KHOj, and Natya Chetana

On May 21, 2020, observed as the World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue, UNESCO launched ResiliArt-India, a webinar series in collaboration with KHOJ International Artists Association, The Marg Foundation, Natya Chetana and India Foundation for the Arts (IFA).

The first webinar titled Arts and Culture during the COVID-19 Crisis in the series was moderated by Arundhati Ghosh, Executive Director, IFA and the panellists included Priya Paul (Director, Apeejay Surendra Group), Sunil Shanbag (Theatre Director, screenwriter and documentary filmmaker), Suresh Jayaram (Founder-Director, 1 Shanthiroad Studio, Bangalore), Venu Vasudevan (Principal Secretary, Department of Revenue and Disaster Management, Government of Kerala) and Farah Batool (Programme Coordinator, Goethe Institut New Delhi).

Throwback Thursdays with IFA

As the lockdown and call for physical distancing continue, and we discover new ways of engaging with technology and online platforms, IFA opened its doors to share the work of our grantees by introducing a virtual series of conversations, film screenings, and performances titled Throwback Thursdays with IFA.

On May 28, 2020: We Exist: Trans-ing the City

We presented the first of this series, titled We Exist: Trans-ing the City, where Poornima Sukumar along with Shanthi, Chandri, Sweta, Sandhya, Tara and Sadhna from the Aravani Art Project were in conversation with Sumana Chandrashekar, Programme Lead, IFA. Click here to watch the recording of the session on our Youtube channel.

Poornima Sukumar received a grant from IFA in 2018, under the Project 560 programme for a Year-long Curated Series of Artistic Engagements in Bangalore.

From a walk carrying the Goddess Yellama in the streets, along with people from the transgender community

On June 11, 2020: Where the Birds Never Sing: A Photographic Project on the Memories of a Massacre

In the second session of the series, Soumya Sankar Bose was in conversation with John Xaviers, Programme Officer, Arts Practice. Soumya shared from his ongoing work on the Marichjhapi Massacre that blurs the boundaries between documentary and staged photographs while creating awareness about a historical event, the documentary evidence of which has been systematically destroyed. Click here to watch the recording of the session on our Youtube channel.

Soumya Sankar Bose received a grant from IFA in 2018, under the Arts Practice programme.

A staged photograph of a woman waiting for her husband who went missing in the Marichjapi massacre

On June 25, 2020: A Discussion on the Documentary Film Pani Pata Poratam / Songs of our Soil

In the third session under the series, the documentary film Pani Pata Poratam / Songs of our Soil was made available online and a discussion was hosted where filmmaker Aditi Maddali was in conversation with Arundhati Ghosh, Executive Director, IFA. Click here to watch the film online and click here to watch the recording of the session on our Youtube channel.

Aditi Maddali received a grant from IFA in 2017, under the Arts Research programme made possible with support from Titan Company Limited.

Poster of the film Pani Pata Poratam / Songs of our Soil

Embracing the Digital Space

Responding to the needs of performing artists as expressed during IFA's Listening Posts in April 2020, we announced Embracing the Digital Space. This two-part online workshop facilitated by Keerthi Kumar, aims at enabling dance/music practitioners and organisers to use online platforms for performing, teaching or generating work for the virtual space/virtual audiences. This is part of our efforts to support artists during this difficult time. Beginning with a basic overview on generating digital work, the workshop provides an understanding of how to make professional work available for online audiences. The Part I: Beginner’s Module was held on Tuesday, June 16, 2020 and Part II: Advanced Module on Tuesday, July 07, 2020 with 25 participants per module. All seats are full. Watch the recording of the The Part I: Beginner’s Module here.

Our staff members were invited to speak at online discussions on arts and philanthropy. In addition, they also participated in various fundraisers and campaigns towards COVID - 19 relief.

Arundhati Ghosh, Executive Director, IFA spoke at an International Virtual Conference put together by the Culture Funding Watch in partnership with Fondation Rambourg Tunisie - مؤسسة رامبورغ تونس on March 20, 2020 to address the current crisis titled COVID-19 Crisis and Emergency Funding Mechanisms: What Action Plans for the Cultural and Creative Sector? With more than 100 attendees from Africa, Asia, Europe, Americas and Australia, the conference was the first step to understanding and debating the COVID-19 crisis and impact from the arts and culture perspective. Click here to read the conference report.

Menaka Rodriguez, Head of Resource Mobilisation and Outreach, IFA, along with Shoaib Iqbal facilitated a discussion titled New Models for Financial Support to the Arts on April 27, 2020. This was part of the Thinking Together in Difficult Times, an online series by ARThinkSouthAsia.

Arundhati Ghosh was in conversation with Rishabh Lalani on May 05, 2020 at Cultural Resilience in a Pandemic as part of the On the Front Lines, a series of public conversations by India's leading thinkers, changemakers, and activists on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemics presented by egomonk. Click here to listen to the recording of the online discussion.

Arundhati Ghosh spoke as part of Atelier for Solidarity – re-imagine our future together organised by The Festival Academy, Belgium on June 15, 2020. Around 80 artists, curators and festival managers, both emerging and expert, from 40+ countries and all continents, as well as cross sectoral experts and players took part in this virtual mutual learning Atelier to re-imagine our future together. Click here for the recording.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Eager and exciting to see you at the following event. Do spread the word!

In the next session under the series Throwback Thursdays with IFA on Thursday, July 09, 2020, from 06:00 PM to 07:30 PM, we present a conversation with Savita Uday, a researcher, educator, farmer and folklorist who runs a not-for-profit organisation called Buda Folklore located in the Uttara Kannada region in Karnataka. Please note that this discussion will be conducted in Kannada and she will be in conversation with Krishna Murthy TN, Programme Officer, Arts Education, IFA.

Savita Uday received a grant from IFA in 2017, under the Arts Education programme made possible with support from Citi India.

Savita worked over the years, alongside members of some of the communities that reside in the Gokarna-Ankola region, to document and revitalise the wealth of songs and stories that are part of their oral tradition. The project supported by IFA enabled her to extend this work by involving the students and teachers of a Government Primary School located in the region. Learn more about the event here.
Click here to register and join this conversation on zoom. It will also be streamed live on facebook. No prior registration is required to join the live streaming.

For more details on these events, do sign up for our emails here, follow us on facebook, Twitter or instagram for regular updates, or simply tune into our website at www.indiaifa.org/events

back to top

As we face perhaps the biggest challenge of our lifetimes during the COVID-19 pandemic, we at IFA need your support more than ever to continue enabling artists to sustain their work and continue to create. This builds hope in communities; helps to keep us grounded and human. As you help the myriad others who need us to stand by them at this critical hour, do also help us so we can make many more grants to artists and scholars who themselves are in dire situations.

Common Roots Festival - Fund for Supporting Arts and Culture during COVID-19’ (F-SAC)

We associated with the Common Roots - A Social Cause Music Festival to raise support for IFA, make many more grants to artists and scholars who are finding themselves in vulnerable positions both socially and economically during this time of crisis. The festival featured over 80 artists from 12 countries playing a wide range of musical styles including jazz, classical, fusion and folk, over three Saturdays in May, 2020.

Common Roots - A Social Cause Music Festival

Please find recordings of the live sessions here. If you enjoy the music, please do consider supporting IFA and donating generously starting from INR 500! To donate, click here

Support IFA and Our Efforts During These Dire Times—Become a friend at Rs 5,000 for one year!

The arts and culture are our windows into the wonder of diverse worlds. During any time of crisis, the arts become central to our lives. The contribution of the arts to our individual and collective wellbeing has never been this evident.

The field of the arts and culture have been hit hard by the pandemic that is looming over all of us. As performance venues and galleries close, many artists are experiencing a loss of income and are struggling to adapt to the new realities.

In such times, we call upon every one of you, who have placed their faith in our work, to help us extend support to the field. Become a Friend of IFA and join a community of art lovers committed to ensuring the continuation of critical artistic interventions and cultural explorations in the country. Support our artists and their dreams to bring alive projects that question our realities; seek untold stories, and experiment to push the boundaries of knowledge and practice of the arts. These projects will reach diverse publications, films, performances, exhibitions, educational and archival materials, and so much more!

back to top

IFA: Your IFA project involved the designing of the archive at the RRI. What were the first steps in your research? Have you worked with a scientific institution earlier?

Ramya Ramesh: I spent the first few weeks of my fellowship trying to understand the institution itself, apart from beginning to work with the material they had collected over the years. This was the first time I was working with a scientific institution, that too, an institution for research in fundamental science! It was also the first time I was working so closely with the Librarian (head of RRI library) and library staff, whom one does not usually interact with beyond the circulation counter.

Initially, I spent a good lot of time reading and understanding their website, which also consists of their digital repository. The library staff had already digitised most of the available collection. However, the material was difficult to comprehend as the scanned photographs and newspaper articles were yet to be titled according to the content. I downloaded it all onto my system and began reorganising and retitling them as per my understanding. In parallel, I started going through the physical archival material and organising them by type viz. photos, newspaper articles, correspondence and research articles.

The first few days also involved understanding how the Librarian, who spearheaded the project, and the Director of the institute envisioned the archival gallery, which I was to design as part of the fellowship. The core team consisted of the Librarian, the Scientific Officer (a scientist, who is the Executive Assistant to the Director) and me. After several discussions, we together wrote down a vision statement - the purpose of the exhibition. So, along with reorganising the archive, I began conceptualising the design of the gallery, building upon my fellowship proposal. All of this happened in the first month!

Along with this, I started reading about the life and science of CV Raman, which has been documented in detail in a book called Journey into Light by Dr G Venkataraman, and also in several other books and articles. The Librarian initiated a parallel project that we both thought could help me better understand the institute, its people and their work - a series of oral history interviews with current and former scientists at RRI.

The first month was both exciting and overwhelming for me!

The former photo-lab at RRI cleared up to make room for the Archival Gallery

IFA: How did your training as an architect inform your design of the physical and intellectual space of the archive?

Ramya Ramesh: I have been reflecting upon this question myself. I have always believed that the skills of an architect can be put to use in diverse ways to create an engaging experience, and this project has made me quite optimistic about this prospect. I realised that as an architect, I was able to visualise not just the physical space, but also information, and how it can be effectively communicated in the limited available space. In hindsight, I was able to assess the situation and give a physical form to abstract ideas by moving back and forth between research and design.

It is unusual that the curator of an archival gallery in a scientific institute is neither a scientist, nor a writer, nor a historian, isn't it? As challenging as this was, my training as an architect also came in handy at this point. As an architect, one is able to interact with people from different backgrounds and create a place using all their knowledge. Here, I constantly interacted with scientists and library staff, read published books, and discussed extensively with the Librarian and the Scientific Officer, and with them, chalked out a plan for the project.

I presented my design to the Director, the committee overlooking the archival gallery, library staff and scientists, and revised it several times based on their inputs. We had several discussions on the purpose of a physical gallery when an extensive one can be put up online. I pointed out that the physical space of the gallery provides a geographical context for the history depicted. Through our discussions, we realised that it becomes a space for collective reflection, with history on the walls, and the central space being used for a dynamic display of current research. Movie screenings, demonstrations, interactive digital screens etc. would give life to the place while being surrounded by its legacy. Through this process, we were able to convert the former photo-lab into a gallery, with stimulating interiors and lighting. The physical space conveyed the spirit of the institute through its materials and design. I am happy that I was able to initiate a participatory design process for the gallery.

School students visiting a temporary exhibition of archival photos at RRI, set up as part of National Science Day

IFA: In addition to designing the archive, you have also worked on mapping the trees in the RRI. What prompted you to do this and how did you go about it?

Ramya Ramesh: The first time I visited the institute for the fellowship interview, I was struck by two things - the trees and the library building. I had already read that the RRI library building was one of the first modernist and exposed, concrete buildings to be built in Bengaluru. It was designed by the famous architect, PK Venkataramanan, of Venkataramanan Associates. When I saw it for myself, I was overcome with awe. So, when I got the fellowship, I decided to trace down the original drawings of this building. This is where the mapping exercise began to take shape in my mind.

In the initial days, while I was going about getting a feel for the institute trying to understand where the different labs are located, I happened to visit the estates and buildings department. As an architect, I cannot help but make sense of history by visualising the transformation of physical space. I was getting uncomfortable trying to string together facts without having a complete image of the institute in front of me. So, I asked the RRI civil engineer for a detailed map of the institute that I can pin up on my tack board. I needed it to anchor my thoughts. However, the department probably didn't see the need for a detailed map since they knew every corner of the institute. I saw this as an opportunity to use my knowledge of visualisation, scale and representation to create a beautiful map for the institute.

I wanted to ensure that the map fits into the narrative of the exhibition. After several discussions, we decided that it is indeed important for visitors to see the institute as a whole before delving into its history. Raman, the founder, was instrumental in planting several trees at the institute. Several RRI members too had spoken about how much they value the trees, so I thought of including that in the mapping of the institute.

Considering the fact that I had to dedicate my time and effort to the archive, I knew I might not do full justice to the map if I did it on my own. So, I gave the task to two fresh architecture graduates who were enthusiastic about mapping the landscape. It took them about two months to map, draw, redraw, model and render the map. We also called on two tree experts to help us with the botanical names and characteristics of the trees.

A view of the RRI Archival Gallery in progress

IFA: Could you describe some of your important learnings and challenges as a fellow at the RRI.

Ramya Ramesh: I learnt that exhibition design indeed is a team effort of researchers, content writers, graphic designers, interaction designers and architects. My challenges lay in constantly switching my role, as the project required me to step into the shoes of a researcher and designer at the same time.

From all my discussions with scientists at RRI, I have learnt to go about my research more scientifically. They would not accept any content without evidence. They were also tough task masters when it came to passing the design. At every stage, they urged me to create prototypes and test my design. Unlike a product designer, I am not used to prototyping. Now, I have come to believe that it is important.

I learnt that library science is a beautiful subject, more than what we may think. It really goes deep into the organization of knowledge. Working with the archive has been a wonderful experience.

My biggest learning from the project has been in the domain of communication, be it the text in the exhibition panels, or e-mails we wrote to scientists. I realised the importance of clear and coherent communication while discussing design and content.

Content aggregation and creation was a challenge in itself. It involved visiting labs and coordinating with around 35 scientists from the 4 research groups to provide images and textual content, and systematically communicating our suggestions for edits. The exhibition panels, although describing very complex physics, had to be made comprehensible by high-school students. Each panel has thus gone through several iterations. It has also taken time, as scientists need to spare time from their busy research schedules for this.

The Librarian and the Scientific Officer were very supportive of me and stood by me when I needed them. It was important for me to understand the role of the scientists, how long they have been associated with the institute and what they see as valuable in this exhibition. I learnt that if projects like these need to be made inclusive, they truly require time, patience and perseverance. I am very happy that IFA and RRI gave me the opportunity to contribute to the cultural and educational space of this esteemed science institution.

Ramya Ramesh received an Archival and Museum Fellowship from IFA in 2018, made possible with support from Tata Trusts.

back to top